Stormwater Guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment

EPA recently supported the City of Emeryville, California in the
development of "Stormwater Guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment."
Emeryville, which is a suburb of San Francisco, has worked for over
a decade on reclaiming, remediating and redeveloping the many brownfields
within its borders. These efforts sparked a successful economic
rebound. The city did not stop there, and decided to harness the
redevelopment for better environmental outcomes, in particular that
related to stormwater runoff. The city faced several challenges,
including a high water table, clay soils, and few absorbent natural
areas among the existing and redeveloped industrial sites.

The guidelines, and an accompanying spreadsheet model, were developed
to make as much use of redevelopment sites as possible for handling
stormwater. The main strategies fell into several categories:

the reduction of the parking footprint by way of shared parking,
making the best use of on-street parking and pricing strategies

landscape design features, such as tree preservation and planting,
use of structural soils, bio-retention and bio filtration strategies

water storage and harvesting through cisterns and rooftop containers

other strategies to handle or infiltrate water on development
and redevelopment sites.

The Guidelines also include a spreadsheet model for sizing on-site
BMPs.

For more information, please contact
Diana Keena (dkeena@ci.emeryville.ca.us) via email or by phone
at (510) 596-4335